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1. If you were ever on the fence about Michael Caine’s acting abilities, watch “The Muppet Christmas Carol”. Because dang, can he put in a moving, heartfelt performance surrounded by Muppets. When Beeker gives him the scarf…<a single man tear>

2. I thought my computer was broken or hacked or messed with by Maura (okay, mostly the latter) because I went to log on, and my mouse was all over the place and every time I tried to click on a link, it would open a new tab. I spent five minutes freaking out, running the virus scanner, getting frustrated…and then I noticed that a shortcut for the new tab was “control + n”…and it hit me. I turned off my wireless keyboard, shook it upside down, got the crumbs out….yeah, sticky keyboard strikes again!

3. My friend got me one of those angel chime candle holder things when she went to Denmark. She had no clue how happy she had made me because we had one of these when I was a child and it always came out at Christmas. Sure enough, tonight, I pulled it out (for the first time, I’m ashamed to say.) As usual, Maura was delighted with it all. The teens however – who had never seen one of these contraptions – were also interested. They also wanted to know – if it was Swedish, did it come from Ikea? (No. Denmark.) And what did Swedish people do when they saw an Ikea? (Duh. Buy stuff.)

A picture of the elusive teens, lulled into a catatonic state by angel chimes and candles

4. I’ve been told that it’s unlucky to light candles with lighters. So we lit the angel chime candles with matches. Just to be safe.

5. I’m out of Bailey’s. This gives me a bit of the sad.

6. I still have pumpkins outside. It got cold and snowed the day after Thanksgiving. So the pumpkins stayed a little longer. My neighbor still has hers out as well, showing solidarity.

7. Maura insisted we buy this green tinsel tree. And lights for it. With the lights on it, it’s a bit wonky, so it’s now my homage to Dr. Seuss, as it is very Whoville.

Like this:

Many years ago, when the kids were shorter than me, I found a deal where I could get a box or two of organic fruit and veg delivered to my doorstep. We’d get exotic things, like kale, and pineapple. The children always found these boxes to be amazing, and were always willing to try something new.

At one point, we got a pomegranate. I’ll be honest, I’d never had one before, and had no clue how to open it. So I left it in the fridge, with plans on researching what to do with pomegranates on the internet – as you do.

That afternoon, my 4th grader came home – with his light blue shirt covered in purple splatter.

“Sean, what happened?”

“Well, I took the pomegranate to school, but I wasn’t sure how to open it.”

I felt sorry for the kids who sat around him at lunch. They probably went home a bit purple as well.

“Sean, new rule – you can’t bring fruit to school that you don’t know how to eat.”

I’ll admit, from that day forward, I wasn’t much into buying pomegranates. I’d buy it already scooped out, seeds in a container, if needed. But really, there’s not a lot of call for fresh pomegranate in my life, and I’m okay with that.

But yesterday…yesterday I was lured into buying them at Whole Foods. They were on sale, a twofer deal. And I knew more about how to open a pomegranate. My children were older now. It was safe.

Or so I thought.

That evening, Miriam asked if she could try one. I said “Do you know how to open it?”

“No.”

Seriously, I will never learn. So I told her to cut it open, scoop out the seeds, eat seeds. I heard the sawing of the knife, then silence, then some scraping and pounding. But it seemed okay, right? She’s fourteen, right? This is the girl who knows savvy things like how to get through airport security and how to haggle with souvenir sellers in Rome and what to do in case of a seizure. Surely my instructions were clear enough.

I was wrong.

So very wrong.

The kitchen looked like a crime scene, where a magenta corpse was dragged about. There was pomegranate splatter everywhere – counter, clean dishes on the drying board, soaking into my lovely oak farmhouse table. The girl? My sweet teen girl? Coated in pomegranate splatter. Bits of pomegranate were left between the kitchen and dining room.

“Miriam! Really? What happened?”

The reply is a bit of a bur, but there were bits of “it was tough” and “I got frustrated with it so just started stabbing at it with a spoon.”

I turned to my husband and said “You would think I’d know better by now than to buy pomegranates.”

You would think.

There’s still one left in the refrigerator. I should probably do away with it before I find it splattered all over my living room or the like.

Like this:

I know I blog mostly about Maura here. Mainly because she doesn’t care what I write about her. She doesn’t have a self-conscious bone in her body. Even when she plays at being self-conscious, it’s theatrical and in a way that just draws more attention to herself.

But my other three children….they care a bit more.

Hence why they don’t make many appearances here on my blog. When they do, it’s usually with their permission, or it’s something mundane enough that they don’t mind me sharing. Sometimes, when something truly bizarre happens in our household, they’ll say “Are you going to blog about it?” Even now, my older daughter is probably reading this.

So for their sake, I don’t post about them much.

They have enough going on in life. They’re teens, they have enough going on with their lives even in a normal sense that they don’t need their mom going off about them on a blog. Because they have Maura as a sister, I am even more aware of trying to keep some areas of their lives as normal as possible. They deal with so much, put up with so much, have had to make sacrifices. The last thing they need is mom rolling her web-based eyeballs at them on the blog.

They’re teens. They’re frustrating and fabulous and have great and horrible taste in tv shows. The geek factor is high in our household as well – watching “Doctor Who” is considered family bonding time, and we may have nearly come to blows over a rousing game of Settlers of Catan. They eat all the food, bring over friends to help eat more of the food, and I am still finding Nerf darts hidden in all corners of my home.

There are probably more Nerf darts than food in my house right now.

I may not mention them much here, but they are great teens. Weird…definitely weird…but great. The weird part is the fault of the parents – they didn’t have a chance of normal, not with our genetic pools – but they’re keepers. They may drive me nuts at times, but when push comes to shove, and something happens with Maura, they’re the first ones lining up to help out, check in on her, worry about her. Even though she throws fits on them when they don’t want to watch the same episode of “Dinosaur Train” for the 40th time in a row, or tries to steal the food right out of their hands, they treat her well. Oh, they get annoyed with her, frustrated when she messes with their stuff, and other normal sibling things – and that’s good. That’s normal for them to react that way to her at times. She needs that in life. Really, they’ve been her best teachers when it comes to how she should be acting. She has learned so much from their examples. And even from the early days, when none of us understood what was going on with her, those three have always had her back. They are her best friends, her teachers, her protectors – which is why I try my best to make sure that for now, they just have to be her siblings.

A failed attempt at a group shot, 2011, Cashel, Ireland. They’re all laughing because Maura was yelling “Ow! My butt!” after bumping said posterior.

Our whole world in a way revolves around Maura’s disabilities – but at the same time, we work hard to make sure that her disabilities don’t smother us, and especially don’t hold back the other three children in our household. Sometimes, it happens. Sometimes, I just have nothing left for them, or we have to cut things short because Maura can’t handle it. And I hate that. It’s one of those guilt things that comes with the territory I guess.

But for the most part, our household is a bit hysterical, in all the good ways, because of those three now teenagers, two of which are taller than me (which my husband would point out is a low bar, short person that I am). And this year, I get to experience all sorts of levels of motherhood – my oldest has just started at the local college (so living at home, but still, college) and working part-time. The second boy has taken up woodworking, so I get to worry about his fingertips. The little teen girl can fit into my shoes, so we’ve had discussions about how we NEVER borrow Mommy’s shoes without permission or Mommy will cut you. I have now learned more about anime than I ever thought I could possibly care about. There was an explosion with yogurt in our kitchen this morning that had nothing to do with Maura. Not as bad as the time one of them tried to melt an ice cube in the microwave, in a plastic cup that had the double wall filled with glitter water. And I haven’t had to call poison control for any of the older three in a long time (1-800-222-1222, if you should ever need Poison Control’s number – thanks to those three, I have it memorized.)

No, we’ve all matured past those times of drinking Fabreeze and using markers as make up. Now we’re dealing with hair dye and talking about geek cons and college courses.